Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I stand in the fifth year of my membership of your Lordships’ House and I am astonished that five Bills have been debated here on this or related subjects in that time. Ought I therefore to take comfort that, as I look forward to my sixth year, I shall have another Bill on the same subject in which to take part? I have begun to think that this has fed an addiction in me and will create a predisposition towards expecting such legislation every parliamentary year. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, that such a plethora of legislative proposals makes it a nightmare for those interpreting the law at the critical points of application. I am intrigued to see that the prospective law we had expected now to be debating is to be called a simplification law. What we need—and what we were promised, I thought—is consolidating legislation to provide a comprehensive legal framework. I look forward to having that. I want to concentrate on one aspect of the matter in general before us. I make no apologies for the fact that I want to speak about what was not referred to either in the opening remarks of my noble friend the Minister or, indeed, in my reading of the Bill or the notes upon the Bill. When the 2008 White Paper, The Path to Citizenship, was published, it was recognised that there were concerns about how those already in the system would be affected by the proposals and about how any transitional arrangements would work. Also, it was recognised that it was important to understand the effects of current proposals on those who may already be in the system. ““We will continue””, the pledge was made, ““to examine this in advance of making the changes””. So I want to hold those who offered the recognition and promised to address those concerns to their word. Several of your Lordships have expressed an interest as occupying key places in the administration of education, welfare or the law. If I have to declare an interest, as I have said many times when I have stood to speak here as a Methodist minister, it is the day-by-day, shoulder-by-shoulder contact with the people who we are talking about in general terms. It is therefore from that angle that I want to speak. It is a subluminary world, a world of shadows where all kinds of alternative lifestyles exist, where people set their targets in ways that are unconventional—indeed, their targets are often related to survival rather than to making good in the climate we create for them. There are people with multiple identities and papers to match. There was a soldier from Fiji who because he was court-martialled no longer had the rights and entitlements of being a member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. My reading of the papers suggested that there was at least prima facie evidence that due process had not been observed in terms of his being dismissed from his post in the Army. He had a fiancée of German nationality from well before the incidents that led to the court martial and, because she could afford the right kind of lawyers, justice was eventually won for that man—but I can think of others for whom those advantages do not exist and who live by disappearing into the woodwork. I deal with a number of deportees. Some of them are taken to Heathrow Airport again and again. One dear lady was taken for the second time, locked in a room while the attendant went for a cup of tea and was forgotten about until found by the cleaner the next day. It is truly astonishing to think of this. She went a third time, incidentally, but now has been given permanent leave to remain. Is it not an extraordinary world that we live in? How does such administrative chaos exist? I shall tell your Lordships about another extraordinary case. Another deportee came to me six years ago. ““Reverend,”” she said, ““they’re going to kick me out””. I looked at her letter and indeed that is what it said. We fought a battle, I wrote endless letters and I telephoned either numbers that were not answered or answerphones that did not work. The situation we had to deal with was Byzantine. In the mean time, her little girl had grown old enough to go to school. We took a photograph of all of us standing with the little girl and sent it to the Home Office, hoping that someone would see it. The next thing we knew was that this lady was given the Volunteer of the Year award for Islington; a star of ““Eastenders”” presented her with her certificate, all the flashbulbs went off and she was in all the local papers. To cap it all, the same lady came to me with another letter; ““Reverend,”” she said, ““what shall I do about this?””. What did it say? ““You are required to do jury service.”” This lady, who had no benefits and no right to employment, for whom we scratched around to find the money to keep her and her little girl in existence—““What shall I do?”” she said. I said, ““Do the jury service””, and she did. She is still waiting for an answer to her case for admission to this country. Some of the people would not qualify under the proposals in the Bill because at some stage in the process they made silly mistakes—they told lies. Wouldn’t you? When I was in Montreal and an amnesty was granted for Haitian immigrants, a Haitian immigrant faced with the prospect of Canadian citizenship, when asked by a person in uniform, ““Can you handle a simple machine?”” and then asked to show that he could, said yes, although he could not. That was because in Haiti a person in uniform is an oppressive person, and you say yes because you think you are placating them. The cultural connotations of helping people to understand the process they are involved in are considerable. I have stood in courts to give character references; I have stood in courts and been denied the chance to give character references. Again and again, this speaks of chaos. I do not ask for indiscriminate support for all the undocumented people in our society. There are shysters, liars and criminals out there, and there is a parasitical industry that feeds on them—lawyers, who have offered me quite a lot of money on occasion to tell lies in court, I can tell you. It is an extraordinary world, but it needs to be treated with due deference. There are Augean stables that need cleaning out, some of them at Lunar House: the number of passports that have been lost and the number of papers mislaid, and the fact that we cannot get access to the document upon which a judgment will ultimately be made. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has mentioned Strangers into Citizens, so I will not repeat that point. The noble Lord has also mentioned the London Detainee Support Group’s recommendations. There are simple things that can be done to clear up a lot of the mess that we are in at this moment. I will retain from this debate the precious memory of the word used by the right reverend Prelate, ““hospitality””, which was given a different nuance by the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, ““sanctuary””, while my noble friend Lord Morris added ““principle”” and ““fairness””. To all of those concepts I would add: ““people””. It is human beings who we are dealing with.